On Wrath

There are seven things which the LORD hates,
Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:
Haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
And hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
Feet that run rapidly to evil,
A false witness who utters lies,
And one who spreads strife among brothers.”

~Proverb 6:19 – 6:19, King James Bible

Mr. Vick, you have sparked worldwide controversy, and another addition to the Seven Deadly Sins collection.

The line “hands that shed innocent blood” was the precursor to Wrath being considered a mortal or deadly sin, but was expanded because, I suppose, a person could be an asshole without actually killing someone. But originally, according to Wikipedia, Wrath was described as “inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger…the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system and generally wishing to do evil or harm to others. The transgressions borne of vengeance are among the most serious, including murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide.”

Let’s be clear here. Vick admitted to setting up, financing, and managing a dogfighting operation. Dogfighting is when two or more dogs are trained, usually through means involving beatings and starvation, to fight to the death. During the fights they literally bite and rip the flesh off each other and die slow and painful deaths, either from organ damage, blood loss, or from having their jugular severed or windpipe crushed. The under-performing dogs are often executed by drowning, hanging, electrocution or gun shot. Vick not only knew what he was financing, but enjoyed watching it, and from all accounts, participated in the execution of the dogs with his own hands.

Hasn’t he ever seen a thriller? Doesn’t he know that people don’t mind watching teenagers get picked off by the dozens, that innocent bystanders can get blown away without a single tear being shed, that even children are fair game…but let threat come to the family pet, and moviegoers will start to whimper in horror?

He released a statement today, which admitted responsibility and refuted earlier claims that he was not guilty of the charges laid.

"First I want to apologize for all the things that I've done and that I've allowed to happen…I was ashamed and totally disappointed in myself, to say the least. And I want to apologize to all the young kids out there for my immature acts. What I did was very immature, so that means I need to grow up. I totally ask for forgiveness and understand as I move forward to a better Michael Vick the person, not the football player. I take full responsibility for my actions. Not for one second will I sit here and blame anyone else for my actions. It was totally irresponsible. I feel like we all make mistakes. I made a mistake in using bad judgment and making bad decisions. And those things just can't happen. Dogfighting is a terrible thing and I did reject it."

Call me crazy, but I don’t see how financing something, watching it, putting money into making it happen more often, and using your own two hands to participate in it is quite the same thing as thinking it’s terrible and rejecting it, and I think it’s kind of rich coming from someone who repeatedly posed in photographs, smiling, with the fighting dogs. But the real problem for me is that he puts what he did down to “immaturity.”

Immaturity makes you date people you know are going to treat you poorly because they look good with no shirt on. Immaturity is mixing anything with Jaegermeister and calling it a shooter. Immaturity is wearing your pants with one pantleg rolled up. Immaturity is not slaughtering dogs. Michael doesn’t need to “grow up,” he needs to do some reading on the psychological profile of violent psychopaths (the three main precursors of which are bedwetting, fire starting, and cruelty to animals.) A man who can sit through a dogfight, enjoy it and want to see more of it, who can hang a dog he bred and raised with his own hands, is a little more than immature. It’s incredibly troubling to me that he would trivialize a crime of repulsive violence to the level of breaking curfew, especially in the same breath as his acknowledgment that he's a role model to children.

I also enjoyed the very subversive tactic of sending a plea to separate “Michael Vick the person” from “Michael Vick the football player.” A nifty trick designed to allow us to hate the person but to try and separate his means of income from his crime. As though a football player who earned millions of dollars by having thousands of fans, many of whom are children, and by being the endorsement face of many products doesn’t have anything to do with refraining from criminal activity. He’s trying to insinuate that while he understands that you’ll hate him for his ‘immaturity,’ his career shouldn’t be impacted. Let’s look at it this way; if Michael Vick was a politician, would we be saying, “Sure, he participated in something like that, but he makes good public policy. He shouldn’t be removed from office.” No, because he’s a football hero. Apparently, our disdain for domestic abuse, rape, animal cruelty and even murder can be lessened by a really impressive record with rushing yards. It’s sad, but it’s life, and I think anyone who expects this man to spend more than a year behind bars is a nice person, but a misinformed one.

Besides, Michael claims to have Found Jesus. His “we all make mistakes” and “I give myself up to God” and redemption talk, as ridiculous as it sounds to most of us, is usually a pretty good strategy, because it confuses the mostly atheist left wing and placates the right wing, who never get to hear about God in the media anymore. (If I were the part of the Christian right, I think I’d actually be pretty pissed off that the only people who kept finding Jesus were those who were trying to evade rehab or escape dog fighting charges, but whatever.) He’s not finished, as much as I’d like to think he was.

And I don’t mean to open a very messy can of worms, but he killed dogs. Would we be going apeshit if they were some other animal? Scary Spice’s boyfriend killed a duck with a brick, but he’s still out there enjoying his life. What if it were a fur farm? A slaughterhouse for cows? Pigs? We like dogs, and I think that’s the problem here. He picked on the Miss Congeniality of the animal world. Every meat-eater out there, myself included, is implicit in the often painful existence and death of animals, it’s a matter of fact that we can pretend isn’t the same, because it’s not dogs, and other people do it all the time. But it is the same. It’s a difference of degree, not of principle. So while I believe he's an asshole and probably a mentally sick man, let's have a rational look at the matter, not a witch hunt.

But if Wrath is having 'hands that shed innocent blood,' he’s guilty of Wrath, no matter which way you cut it, and I don’t think Jesus would be all that keen on him. If Vick did a little more homework, he’d find out that committing a deadly sin, in the eyes of the God that he’s currently trying to give himself up to, “destroys the life of grace” and is unforgivable except through confession and perfect contrition, neither of which he’s showing. That Old Testament stuff does not allow for lesser sentencing and plea bargaining; he’s probably better off giving himself over to the Judicial Branch of Georgia than to God. If he’s not careful, he’s going to face an even less pleasant reception once he checks in for eternal damnation; personally, I kind of like to think that he’ll be issued a suit made out of meat and introduced to an unforgiving pack of his former pets.

But Disney taught us that all dogs go to heaven, where, unlike the NFL, Vick probably will not be welcome. And I sure hope the poor puppies are up there right now, being loved and cared for by Helen Keller, and the kid from Lassie.

Rest in peace, you poor things. You were the only ones Vick forgot to apologize to in his speech.


For my friend R, who is a friend to all puppies and kittens, and who would probably be happy to see this guy get his ass kicked. By Johnny Cash.

On Sloth

"The path of awakening is a process. It’s a process of gradually learning to become intimate with our so-called obstacles. So rather than feeling discouraged by laziness, we could look into our laziness, become curious about laziness. We could get to know laziness profoundly. We can unite with laziness, be our laziness, know its smell and taste, feel it fully in our bodies. The spiritual path is a process of relaxing into this very moment of being. "

~Buddhist Meditation on Laziness, from the Shambhala Sun

“Sloth views the towers of Fame with envious eyes,
Desirous still, yet impotent to rise.”

~William Shenstone, Scottish poet

Well, sure, I guess that makes sense. One of the central tenets of Buddhism is that the pursuit of one's desires is a primary source of human suffering. The Scots, on the other hand, have always believed in the 'run in, steal stuff, and run away' as a pretty good strategy for material gain. This is a race that could run through briar patchs wearing skirts with no underwear. You have to give them that they were a pretty tough and industrious people.

So Sloth is generally defined as physical or mental apathy; in Christian times this meant putting off or not doing what God intended you to do. Which is pretty unfair, if you ask me, because according to the Bible stories I remember, God tended to be kind of vague with the instructions. His way of asking Moses to round up the Chosen People and get them to agree to wander the desert for forty years was to set a bush on fire. I probably wouldn't have gotten it. With Abraham He used the rather unclear metaphor of appearing as a smoking brazier and pillars of smoke and fire to let Abraham know to go to the Promised Land. He's God, so I guess He can do whatever He wants, but maybe if you really want someone to do something then you should be a little more clear. I guess He got kind of annoyed after He went to all the trouble of writing the Ten Commandments in stone tablets, and people still kept breaking them relentlessly for the next 2,000 years.

So in our modern times and in the absence of flaming shrubbery, sloth means not so much disobeying God but not living up to one's full potential. I ask, is that so bad? If we were all living to our full potential all the time, then companies would be all management and no staff. Getting an "A" in school would have no meaning because no one else was getting Bs, Cs or Fs. No one would be dating anyone, because they'd all be waiting for their best possible match. Everyone would be high achieving, neurotic workaholics with inflated titles who couldn't hold together a fulfilling relationship because of impossibly high expectations.

Oh wait, that's my entire generation.

Now, I am not advocating the kind of sloth that results in having to be crane-lifted through a hole in the roof when one dies, wearing a muumuu and a patina of Double Stuff Oreos and KFC grease. No, I advocate a more moderate form of sloth. Achievement is a brilliant thing, in its place. But have we, as a generation, forgotten how to be lazy?

Take vacations. Does anyone go to Hawaii anymore? There is nothing really to do in Hawaii, as far as I know. All you're supposed to do there is drink things out of coconuts, lie on the beach, turn over occasionally, and fan oneself. I'm pretty sure the hotels don't even have gym equipment. But I never hear of anyone going there anymore. All people want to do on vacation these days is rack up yet another achievement. It's still a competition. They're either humping up Mount Kilimanjaro or running away from marauding bulls in Spain or spending the week fighting off a bad bout of dysentery in Vanuatu. I guess climbing 3,000 stairs to ascend to Maccu Pichu is a really great break from the bustle of our modern lifesyle, which probably includes a gym routine involving hours on....the stair climber. I just don't get it. Civil unrest, disease and physical hardship aren't frequently featured on postcards, and for good reason.

It's like we have no idea how to simply be anymore. Even activities which are supposed to be relaxing are no longer sacred. Yoga either has to go faster, like Power Yoga, or the heat has to be cranked up to forty degrees to make it harder. Walking is no longer even considered worthwhile unless you are goose-stepping along like the Third Reich and constantly checking your heart rate. Television is no longer about entertainment. It's about reality TV. Since when do we spend all day in reality only to want to come home and watch more of it on TV? There's no escape.

The large majority of professionals I know spend about two or three hours a day engaged in productive, focused work, another three hours on urgent but unimportant busy work, and another four hours where they do absolutely nothing. I think this is because on some subconscious level, we resent having to be there for ten hours, five or six days a week. The argument goes that our economy has become dependent on these long hours and would crumble if we instituted a shortened workday or three day weekend. But I doubt it.

The average US worker works 1,777 hours a year. That's a lot, considering that the number factors in people who work part-time and is after allowing for annual vacation. Canadians work 1,717 (60 hours, coincidentally enough, is the average number of hours Canadians spend watching hockey in a year.) The countries with the highest working hours are Poland and the Czech Republic, topped only by Korea with 2,300 hours per year. Ever notice that at no time in history have people been trying to get into the Czech Republic? Or Poland? Nope, as far as I remember you always hear stories about people desperately trying to get out. And no wonder.

Who works the least of the developed nations? Sweden and the Netherlands. And these have to be the most smug countries in the world; they're the Reese Witherspoons of the UN. Their citizens only work about 1,300 hours a year, and yet their economies somehow manage. In fact, Sweden is widely touted as having some of the best talent and most innovative business practices in the world. They have a strong export economy, are politically stable, have free childcare and heavily-subsidized higher education. Weird that all those lazy people are able to pull off what the rest of the modern world hasn't been able to at a much higher level of work output.

Is it because they pay such high taxes? Perhaps, I don't know. But we pay high taxes in Canada too, and those Swedes are working way less than us, so the efficiencies must be coming from somewhere.

If you ask me, spiritual apathy is much more likely to flow from this kind of hysterical over-achieving than from a few bouts of reflection and quiet recovery, even if you have to have them while wearing stretchy-waist pants. But in order to give ourselves some downtime, we need to stop rewarding the corporate culture that makes people brag about being on a first-name basis with the janitorial night staff and accruing three months worth of untaken vacation. When someone tells you that they're going to spend their week off base jumping in Acapulco or doing an altitude marathon in the Andes, slap them in to the nearest hammock. They'll thank you one day.

After all, vague signs or no vague signs, even God took a break on the seventh day, and he created the universe. If all you're responsible for creating is quarterly reports...

...give thyself a break.

On Sex and Politics

"The idea of this 'virtual representation' is the most contemptible that ever entered into the head of a man. It does not deserve a serious refutation. We have ever been in possession of the exercise of this our constitutional right, of giving and granting our own money. We would have been slaves if we had not."

~Prime Minister William Pitt, 1766

Ever heard of that the rallying cry, “no taxation without representation?” It became famous in the eighteenth century, when America was getting collectively pissed off at the British for taxing them without representing them in Parliament. It’s a fair criticism of systems that seek to take the resources of citizens without giving them political rights, or other benefit, in exchange for them. This is known in a moderate form as communism and in an extreme form as slavery.

How is communism the same as slavery, you ask? It takes away resources by force and redistributes them. But one is done to rich people and one to poor people, you say? Well, principles are principles. Our society, like it or not, is based on the idea that we're allowed to have what we earned. Giving someone in power the right to take it away is either naughty or it isn't, regardless of whether you do it to people who have lots or nothing. I say it is. Heartily disagree with me? I respectfully direct you to either Ayn Rand's "The Virtue of Selfishness" or David Kelley's "Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence." Still disagree? Too bad, it's my blog and I get to do whatever I want, so there.

So America dealt with this injustice by dumping tea in the Boston Harbour and then throwing an eight year tantrum known as the American Revolution. If you ask me, "no taxation without representation" is also a stellar way to look at modern relationships.

I’ve already explored the idea that relationships are heavily impacted by technological advancements, particularly the Internet. But technology only represents the bed of the river. Swirling above is social norms, our culture, our manners…the fluid and ever-moving elements that are generally quite content to be shaped by the bed but which still have the capacity, occasionally, to completely subvert them. Language is just one of these forces, but like the banks of a river, can cut a swath right through rock over time.

As a long-time observer of social customs, relationship quirks and gender wars, the one complaint I've heard more than any other is about the lack of definition in relationships. Relationships were, at one time, very clearly defined. You 1) dated, then 2) went steady, then 3) got engaged, then 4) got married and 5) had children. Moreover, there were very clear designations at each stage: a tongue down your throat meant you were dating; a pin or letterman jacket (or the absence of other tongues down your throat) meant you were going steady, a ring meant you were engaged, a new last name and having sex meant you were married, and squeezing small people out of your body generally meant children. No real confusion there. And, much like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you didn’t advance to the next stage until you’d completed the one before. Do not stop, do not pass go. Clear definitions and clear demarcation meant that the rights and obligations of your respective stage were protected. Thus at each stage, you had representation.

For the brave souls out there on the singles scene today, the stages are not that clear and with the exception of that resilient survivor, the engagement ring (and if you think us women are ever giving that up, you’re crazy) there are few if any defining markers at any point. So if we can no longer define our relationships, can we really ever expect representation for them?

Modern dating simply does not serve the same purpose as it did in the days of poodle skirts and cars large enough to actually have sex in. Back then, it was a time to establish the other person’s social graces, assess income level and earnings potential, identify existing areas of irreconcilable differences, and try to postulate whether you could ever bear the idea of seeing them naked on a daily basis.

Nowadays, it remains a relatively good way to establish social graces and earning potential, but irreconcilable differences aren’t really all that important when the maximum obligation you’re likely going to have to each other may only be for the time it takes to order and eat a crispy salmon skin roll. And the mystery has largely been taken out of the whole 'marital relations' factor; dating is now more a chance to work a good meal into our busy work schedules and assess whether or not you’re attracted enough to the person to justify the sex you may or may not be having shortly after the crispy salmon skin roll.

Going steady? This one of all the stages is on the most shaky ground. No one really asks to "go steady" anymore, although "The Talk" is still a dreaded phenomenon among the commitment-phobic. But even having "The Talk" doesn't really clearly define a relationship. I remember once having a summit with a girlfriend of mine who had been dating someone for three months and who, somewhat by accident, found herself the recipient of The Talk.

"I think we should only see each other," he proposed.

She felt the same way, and since things were going marvelously, was ecstatic. However, she was completely confused when, immediately following the Dedication Proclamation, he followed up with, "But, I'm just not comfortable with the term girlfriend. I'm having lots of fun with you. Do we really need a label?"

Yes, we do. Because it's getting way too confusing.

It used to be that monogamy was the sole indicators of relationship status. Once that was established, it was all good to go on the girlfriend/boyfriend terminology. Certain obligations (sleepovers, bathroom storage, guaranteed date for weddings, appropriateness of suggesting fetish sex) were assumed. Now, it takes a complicated mathematical formula involving weighted averages to figure it out. I had one girlfriend who had been living with a man for a year, had met the parents, spent every weekend with him, had exchanged "I love yous," and had gone on several vacations with him...yet he resolutely insisted on introducing her as a 'friend.' I knew another woman who very much enjoyed the company and mutual orgasms of a great man for six years and yet never once considered accepting his proposal to "try and make it work," nor would she even spend the night. (His friends eventually suspected she was an invention, which was a constant source of indignance for him.)

We've all been in relationships that were intense, involved, intimate, and yet never defined. So are we paying into a system without receiving fair representation? And if so, should we be gathering up rebel leaders to commiserate and dumping tea into a harbour, instead of gathering up our friends to commiserate and dumping vodka down our throats?

Or if not, could it be that the freedom we enjoy makes up for what we lose?

Perhaps. Once, long ago, I remember being about six weeks in with a really lovely guy. We didn't have too much in common, but the conversation was good, he had great taste, and not to put too fine of a point on it, he had the face of an angel and the body of an underwear model. Furthermore, he was three years younger, than I, which lent an insouciant 'coo coo cachoo Mrs. Robinson' air to the whole affair. I figured especially given his age, that he wouldn't be in much of a hurry to define things.

Or so I thought. Sometime after the seared foie gras and just before the third glass of Cabernet Sauvignon he decided to spring The Talk.

Whether We Were On The Same Page. He Wasn't Looking For Casual Anymore. It Was Time To Think Seriously About Things. And then...the harbinger of relationship death: Where Was This Going.

It was as if everything had capital letters. I looked around in panic. Candles on the tables. Dinner had been his suggestion. He'd made reservations. We were on a courtyard. There was a bread basket. I had been planning dessert while he had been planning progeny. And, after only a split second pause to mentally try out the new last name (hey, we're girls) I felt the hated litany bubble up from my own lips.

"You know, I'm really having fun with you the way things are. I don't want to rush anything. I think you're a great person. Do we really need to define things?

Turns out, I did. A few weeks later the ick factor settled in and I realized that the Americas were right; sometimes revolution is preferable to an uneasy truce. I broke things off for good. I still kind of miss him, sometimes.

Oy. Maybe there's something to that virtual representation deal after all, Mr. Pitt.

On Housekeeping and State Dumplings

It's rare that I deal with such trivial matters as housekeeping, so you'll have to indulge me while I write a whole post that is neither snarky nor particularly interesting nor that uses the word of God as a catchy platform for a series on venal sins. It's just...housekeeping.

First off, I put links to the "Best of," which is really stretching the Greatest Hits concept since I've only got a handful of posts on here, period. (Then again, if Hillary Duff can have a greatest hits album after only two albums so can I. She might as well have just called that compilation "One Half the Crap I Sang" and been done with it.)

Then I thought that nothing would motivate me to write the rest of the Deadly Sins more than to clearly admit on the home page that I only have 3 of the 7 Deadly Sins done, and they're all the pansy ones.

Lastly, I put an (fictitiously named) email address up so that people can contact me, so everyone can stop pointing out now that I don't have one on my profile. And I changed my profile picture. I'll buy a pink martini for anyone who gets the reference.

So here it is, not at all new, but (slightly) improved. Enjoy.

On a side note, during the whole housekeeping process, I noticed someone from Botswana was reading A Walk in the Snark - not just flipping through but actually reading it - and as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't get much cooler than someone from Botswana popping in. So in honor of our Tswanian friend, here are some fun facts about Botswana:

Botswana's national motto is one word, Pula. It means 'rain.' Pretty direct and to the point; way to resist all that flowery "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet" nonsense like Saudi Arabia or "Liberty, equality, fraternity" crap like France. No, they just want it to fucking rain already. Poor Botswana only gets about 300 mm of rainfall per year. Vancouver gets 4,030 mm...and we bitch about it constantly. Think about that the next time you're griping and pulling out the Mountain Equipment Co-op.

Botswana attained independence from the United Kingdom back in 1966. It essentially pulled a coyote ugly and gnawed off its own arm to escape the Commonwealth. Later that year, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton formed the Black Panther Party. Chairman Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in China. Kellogg's introduced Apple Jacks cereal. Coincidence? I think not.

Botswana is home to the Kalahari Desert. I know you're all out there going, well, duh! but I bet you secretly didn't know where it was either. Now you do, and now you can shame other people with your worldly knowledge at cocktail parties.

Botswana is the 45th largest country in the world, only slightly smaller than the Ukraine. Now, we all know size doesn't matter all that much, but more importantly, if Botswana has a national treat that even comes close to the tastiness of the perogi, I don't know about it. I'm not even sure if Botswana has a state dumpling. Might be something to look at, in case the former Soviet Union tries to rise and absorb Slavic Europe again and Botswana gets to jump ahead. Not that it's a contest. Because it's not.

The President of Botswana's name is Festus Mogae. Which is probably a totally common name in Botswana, but to us Canadians sounds pretty damn sinister. I hope he's nice. I just can't picture someone picking up their cute little baby all cooing and wrapped in swaddling clothes and going "Awwwww, look, honey. Look at little baby Festus." But that's just me.

Anyway, there's the Walk in the Snark update and a few fun facts about Botswana.



Writer's Post-Script: While reading through national mottos, I came across the very unassuming motto of Austria, "It is Austria's destiny to rule the world." Wow, that's some pure brotherhood there. I can't even believe that Hitler could have come from a nice little country like that.

On Pride

I'm not so sure about those early Christians.

Sure, you have to kind of admire anyone who thought up the idea of feeding people to lions for fun, but I'm not so sure they really understood the concept of moral relativism. How can pride be a deadly sin? Pride is defined by Wikipedia as “a strong sense of self-respect, a refusal to be humiliated as well as joy in the accomplishments of oneself or a person, group, or object that one identifies with.”

Sounds good to me. People spend a lot of money every year on books to teach them how to have pride in themselves, insofar as pride relates to self esteem. I guess what really got the goat of the robe-and-sandal set was more hubris, or excessive arrogance and vaingloriousness (yes, I used it in a sentence, and yes, I am that good.) I can understand that. They probably had the six deadly sins all ready to go, had the foresight to envision Yaletown, and decided to round it up to lucky ole' number seven.

Even Aesop chimed in on the whole issue. As the story goes, two cocks (OK, roosters, but cock is just more fun to say) were fiercely fighting for the mastery of the farmyard.

"One at last put the other to flight. The vanquished Rooster skulked away and hid himself in a quiet corner, while the conqueror, flying up to a high wall, flapped his wings and crowed exultingly with all his might. An Eagle sailing through the air pounced upon him and carried him off in his talons. The vanquished Rooster immediately came out of his corner, and ruled henceforth with undisputed mastery."

The moral? Pride goeth before a fall.

Man, I wish a big eagle would come around and take George Bush off our hands.

I have no idea why this man is possibly still in power. Come on, Lindsay’s in rehab and Britney is bald and Paris has to poo in a glass room, so there is a God. What on earth is God up to letting this asshat run one of the wealthiest nations in the world? And I don’t blame Americans at all, because I’ve never, ever met one that didn’t think he was a complete asshat too. So who the hell voted for him?

I think God did it as some grand plan to remind us that pride might be OK in Chapters but it's not OK when you start trying to unilaterally blow up things you don't like. Here is a man who barely got in office at all. He should have been thanking his lucky stars that he got to be President after the nation he was set to lead categorically and undisputedly let him know that the majority of them really wanted the other guy. He should have lived out his years in office keeping his mouth shut, quietly emulating Clinton and keeping an eye on his daughters but noooooo, he decided to go rampaging around the developed world like a schoolyard bully. And while admittedly, no one got the atomic wedgie worse than Iraq, there’s no discounting the injustices he’s visited upon the American people he has sworn to serve.

Like the whole faith-based welfare initiatives. I get that George W. Bush is a Christian and is, generally, Up With Christ. But last I checked there was something in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution about keeping church and state separate. I guess nobody but me thinks it’s kind of crappy that the President just read that part in the Constitution, shrugged, and went, "oh well."

And the whole War on Terror. I will go on record and say that I whole-heartedly agree that a response needed to be made to the terrorist attacks. And I appreciate that it had the side benefit of freeing the nation of Afghanistan from an oppressive regime that attracted international criticism for human rights violations and which the US tolerated quite happily for five years. But did it need to be a preemptive war that has permanently jeopardized international relations, led to the deaths of over 650,000 civilians, and allowed the suspension of civil liberties on ground not our own?

Oh, George, but for your pride, you could have listened to those older and wiser than yourself. Martin Luther King Jr. would have seen the futility in your efforts immediately.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

And moreover, perhaps someone who can’t spell nuclear shouldn’t be in charge of the big red button. I’m just saying. But no, he’s like the proverbial pitbull, who once he locks his jaw into something, cannot let go. Too dumb, and too mean.

And, methinks, about to take a fall. His approval ratings are in the 30s, which are comparable to Nixon’s during the Watergate scandal. Only 19% of the people in his country think that he’s headed in the right direction, which is pretty much tantamount to 4 out of 5 people thinking he’s come unglued. Former President Jimmy Carter called Bush’s presidency the worst in history. Uh, this is Jimmy Carter, folks. This guy believes in UFOs but he stops short at thinking Bush should run the country? That should tell us something.

So if pride goeth before a fall, Mr. Bush’s days are numbered. World wide censure? Check. An impeachment? Getting there.

A giant eagle? We can only hope. Guess those early Christians were onto something after all.

On Exit Interviews

In the world of Human Resources, you usually have a sit-down interview with your departing employees to find out why they're leaving.

You ask them about how their needs were or weren't met, determine whether there was a breakdown somewhere along the way, and basically give them an opportunity to give very frank 'feedback' about the dissolution of the relationship. The idea is, I guess, that since they don't have to be there anymore, that they'll be brutally honest and that you'll gain insight on how not to make the same mistakes again.

When one is in love and that love ends, and one is struggling through the painful haze of rejection, there is, at times, an overwhelming urge to find out just why that person tendered their resignation.

I wonder, when it comes to finding out what exactly happened...

...do we ever really want to know?

Sometimes knowledge means power. Sometimes an ex will tell someone, who tells you, that he's still not quite over you. Sometimes you'll find out from an old coworker that the person who took over your job never connected with people the way you used to. And sometimes a friend will tell you that the reason you fell out of touch was because they just absorbed in a new relationship and that they sure do miss those times you used to clink Cosmopolitans and discuss what to do when the bill sits too long on the table on a first date.

But when the emotional stakes are as high as they are after a breakup, is it ever a good idea to get the pure, unvarnished, and sometimes splintery truth?

Certainly there is a temptation to think that there might have been a simple equation that we just missed in the delicate dance of finding the right person in the big, mean city. That there was a simple need there that we didn't meet, some misstep along the way that could be rectified by a simple and heartfelt conversation over a bottle of very good Shiraz. That if we could only figure out the fatal flaw, that we could resolve everything and go back to sharing overpriced dinners and underclarified relationship status. Or if it couldn't recover, that at least we wouldn't risk another relationship with our clinginess, distance, or other imagined failings.

But I guess that assumes that we're able to work on ourselves in love the same way we do in our jobs, and I suspect it might be a little more tricky than that. After all, I know that I've myself initiated breakups for some pretty capricious reasons. But it wasn't so much about the person themselves as where I was, or what I thought I wanted at the time. I've broken things off because they never wanted to have "the talk" and with others for being too clingy. I once broke up with someone because he was a 'loose kisser'; another time I decided that I had to break things off because the man in question didn't support women in the military, and I figured that meant my future would necessarily include humping TV dinners and twist cap domestic beer out to the rec room every night of our married life. Another girlfriend of mine broke up with someone because he insisted on wearing a down vest with everything to regulate his body temperature, and to her, it symbolized a fundamental incapacity to deal with life's challenges.

The thing is, there wouldn't have been anything that they could have done. It wasn't really about face tautness or feminist repression or inappropriate outerwear choices. Those were cosmetic reasons that were much easier to explain than tackling the more challenging notion of "they're just not the one." Our paths not taken are inevitably someone else's down-filled Romeo, so perhaps it's best to let sleeping vests lie.

And another compelling reason for leaving the rocks unturned might be to preserve our hopes, at least for that tender stage when you're bursting into tears at the sight of the extra toothbrush in your bathroom. I think most of us have looked back on a romance long abandoned, for reasons known only to us at the time, and wondered what might have been. For a moment, we miss the way their cologne used to smell, or the way they heard us tell the same story at a party three times and never said a word, or the way they used to let us curl up into the nook of their arm until we feel asleep even when they were lying awake semi-paralyzed. It's comforting to think that the people who broke our hearts might be falling asleep somewhere, possibly with a photo of someone new on their nightstand, but thinking about how cute it was that we used to pretend to be asleep on the couch when they got home late just for the sheer pleasure of getting carried to bed. I'd love to think that.

Despite our deepest impulses, our dark and insatiable urge to know the real story, the truth is that sometimes there isn't something that we could have put our finger on and fixed. We may call our weaknesses "areas for opportunity" in the workplace, but in the realm of the heart, a performance review may never be the path to enlightenment. So I say forgo the exit interview. We may not be great analysts, or time managers, or team players, but we are all great at being brave enough to love again after being left.

Knowledge may give us bargaining power, but trust gives us resilience, and that will hold us in good stead even when the deal goes bad. And our memories, I think, no matter how fallible, are just too precious to ever negotiate with.



For my very brave, very best friend, K, who is still looking for that puffy vest that fits her just right.

On Dangerous Penises and Harmless Torture

To continue my previous rant...er, post, and to indulge my love of throwing a controversial theory around, are images of sex, violence, and drugs in popular media all that harmful? Or is the contextual basis what we should really be looking at?

Here's my (soon to be belaboured) point. I don't think that violence, harsh language, or sex is all that harmful to older children or teenagers, provided they are capable of understanding the context and the purpose for showing it. When it doesn't have a purpose, it's what we call gratuitous. There just to titillate, a little "gratuity" or tip for the hardworking average Joe for coughing up $25 or whatever it is now for a ticket. I love gratuitous nudity and violence in its place. If you ask me, a courtroom drama where the DA takes down her hair, whips out her breasts, blows up a car outside, and then resumes her closing argument is a better courtroom drama because of it. But I'm 28 years old and a working professional. I would never blow up a car I paid 18% interest on for four years. And I also know that showing your breasts in a professional situations is more likely to get you hauled into HR's office than into a plushy executive position.

There, the purpose is to entertain. It's not a part of the story, no statement is being made, and the contextual basis is nil. We as adults can make that distinction. But children can't. We'd hardly want an 8 year old to think that blowing up a car doesn't have consequences. Or to not realize that when a ninja clears a room of bad guys, that the reason the bad guys are conveniently lying quietly afterward is because they are dead or dying of massive internal injuries. So do I believe we should limit gratuitous nudity, drug use, violence, and language in film to adults? Abso-fucking-lutely. Without the ability for children to understand not only what they're seeing, but why they're seeing it, they should never see disturbing material separated from its proper contextual basis. They just don't have the capacity to make the call...but moreover to even understand that a call is being made.

But when controversial elements are used to make a point, I believe it can be more beneficial than damaging. Sure, you don't show a three year old a beheading under any circumstances. But look at Glory, Boys in the Hood, Requiem for a Dream, Mean Creek, or Bowling for Columbine. These movies all use controversial elements, and all of them earn their right to depict what they depict with a thoughtful treatment of the matter at hand. Hotel Rwanda showed little children dead on the lawn of a suburban neighborhood, and that image has never left me. But it earned the right to do that. Pay it Forward used the death of a child to force people to cry right at the end. It was completely unnecessary, exploitative, and served as a plot twist. It was melodrama, and melodrama is entertainment. Is the death of a child entertaining to you? Not to me.

Glory showed graphic violence, yes. Would I recommend that 11 year olds see it? No, but it's a well-made film with considerable historical value that puts across so many valuable messages without being preachy: that people united in something of value can put aside racial and class differences and support one another, that standing up for what is fair and right is more important than monetary gain or social acceptance, that bad attitudes can be changed by empathy and willingness to understand a fellow man's experiences, and that war is a horrific experience and that the casualties involved are significant and personal and tragic - unlike most video games would have us believe. Yet no one under 18 is able to see this movie, despite the fact that they are the very same age group targeted by military recruitment efforts. Apparently we believe that 17 year olds with parental consent are fit to serve in the military, but not old enough to witness the human consequences of war.

Boys in the Hood was a movie that looked at systemic racism as a whole, and more specifically, how gang violence, drugs and alcohol, and absent parents contribute to the shocking mortality rate of (mostly) African-American (mostly) men living in ghettos. This is a very relevant film that takes a hard look at the senseless violence that results from joining a gang, and the trap that drug and alcohol use can create when it strips away the desire to change one's current environment. Unless I'm mistaken, and the newspapers would lead me to believe I'm not, the 15-17 year olds that can't see it would be the ones that need this message, in time, the most. Not to mention that the characters in the movie were 17 year olds; are we arguing that we can bear that they deal with in reality what we couldn't bear for them to see in a movie?

Requiem for a Dream is disturbing, all right. The MPAA felt it was so much so that it was hit with the NC-17 rating, meaning that no theatres in their right mind would have shown it, and it would have faced financial ruin. The producers finally elected to release it unrated to avoid this, but theatres would then still have to restrict children. Now, this is not for the kiddies; double-headed dildos, forced amputation, electroshock treatment and prison beatings are pretty extreme consequences of drug use. But as a deterrent from drug use, for older teenagers who are experimenting with harder and harder drugs at younger and younger ages, this sure would beat the pants off the vague "just say no" superficiality of most anti-drug policies. The presence of the drugs isn't the point, and their inclusion shouldn't necessarily be the problem, since only the certifiably insane would claim that this film glamorizes drug use in any way.

Mean Creek, rated R, takes a calm, quiet, deeply unsettling look at school-age bullying and what can happen when a bad, if somewhat understandable idea gets into the hands of the wrong kid. The bully in this movie is pretty bad, but the movie is brave enough and cares enough to show that his aggression is due to the deep loneliness he feels at being unable to connect. The teenager that encourages the others to act out a vengeance ploy is no white knight avenger but a bully in his own right, satisfying his own emotional agenda. The teens realize once the plan is underway that it might be a bad idea, but don't act, and their inability to resist the mob mentality results in tragedy. As if that wasn't enough antidote to the "kick the bad guy's ass" simplicity of most teen dramas, they must struggle with whether to tell the truth and deal with the consequences, and why they must in order to hope for redemption. The reason, incidentally, for banning this film from being seen by teenagers is because of the use of the "F" word. If you know of even a 10 year old who has never heard this word, you live in a much nicer world than I.

Here we have a movie depicting preteens and teenagers struggling as they start to develop an independent moral system. It's just that lack of moral system that we point to time and time again when we see horror in the news; but since we never give young people the encouragement or opportunity to think about these issues, how can we expect them to develop it in a vacuum? Bowling for Columbine is another great example of this specious logic, a thought-provoking film that teenagers cannot see. If anyone should be outraged by this, it should be those very teenagers, their schoolteachers, and parents. Gun control is becoming an issue that is screaming to be addressed. Children do not feel secure at schools, and they know damn well why they shouldn't; the same 17 years olds that acquired the guns and killed their classmates would have been deemed too young to see a film discussing their actions or the political system of a country that allowed it to happen. If teenagers are not asked to think about such things, we are putting an already vulnerable segment in an even more precarious position: ignorance.

I am certainly not advocating movies as a scare tactic for today's youth, but I believe that raising consciousness and having discussion about issues like drug use, bullying, gun control, gang violence, war, racism are more important than using censorship to pretend they don't exist. If a movie earns the right to depict something with sensitivity and depth, let us think twice before we reject it out of hand.

Or at the least, demand that the MPAA start to justify their decision making process. The sight of a penis or pubic hair almost guarantees an NC-17 regardless of context. Too traumatizing, I suppose, for teens to see something that exists in their own pants. But somehow it's not considered traumatizing for trashy Hollywood fare to show misogynist attitudes and violence if it's supposed to be funny.

How else do you explain the MPAA feeling that a movie like Employee of the Month, where the clerks sit around spewing homophobic remarks and a dimwitted female lead rewards with sexual favours anyone who attains "Employee of the Month" status as suitable entertainment for 14 year olds?

And then there's Big Daddy, where an unfit adult caregiver repeatedly has fits of violent rage in front of a 5 year old and even encourages said 5 year old to participate. Adults know that a child in real life who was abandoned, found by a stranger and forced to witness violence and urinate on newspapers would be seriously traumatized. And probably, so do most teenagers. But a little more insidious is how the main character continuously degrades and humiliates a woman because she worked as a waitress for Hooters to put herself through medical school. Somehow this feels...icky. What is the movie trying to say, here? We know that a woman intelligent and driven enough to support herself and get through medical school while working is a far better role model than a 32 year old who works one day a week at a tollbooth because he's living off a settlement, who uses an abandoned child as a ploy to get dates, and who is a violent jerk, but the movie's not quite sure about that. His incessant and misogynistic comments about her being "nothing but a Hooters girl" and "what are you going to tell your kids about their mother" despite her being a doctor is a little worrisome, considering that his character uses a "live nudes" sign as a night light. But the fun is being poked at his stupidity, right? I'm not so sure. The former Hooters girl with the medical degree is portrayed very clearly as the 'bad guy' for being concerned about the child's welfare and condemning the clearly antisocial behaviour of the Sandler character, while the Sandler character comes off as sympathetic. So what's going on? And can a 13 year old really make that distinction, if I can't quite figure it out?

Or 2 Fast 2 Furious, another PG-13 where we have men repeatedly punching and kicking each other, a race where a car (and presumably, the driver) ends up turned sideways beneath a semi and is crushed, a man repeatedly bashing another man's head onto a dashboard and then using a button to eject said man into a body of water and (are you ready for this?) a scene where a men forcibly ties another man down, places a live rat in an upside down can on the man's bare chest and heats the can with a torch, thus making the tortured rat have nowhere to escape but through the man's body. Soon thereafter the man removes the can and rat, we see the bloody scratch marks on the man's chest.

Now that's something that I just wouldn't want a 14 year old to be exposed to. MPAA, you have some 'splaining to do.

On Fascism in Hollywood

The MPAA gets to do whatever they want and that really pisses me off.

The MPAA (that's the Motion Picture Association of America, natch) is the association that determines movie ratings. Movie ratings, in turn, tell us what subject matter is harmful to people, and at what age.

So what, you ask? Well, film has and continues to play a large part in shaping dominant cultures, and is a medium through which we express what is relevant to our society and how we interpret it. Not only the boob, to be flip, but how we feel about boobs. It gives us both the subject and the contextual frame. The medium, as MacLuhan has long said, is the message.

Said MPAA has had a long standing (and long criticized) policy of tolerating extreme movie violence while adopting a very punitive attitude towards acts of sexuality, particularly that related to the human body. This would lead me to believe that the minds behind the MPAA's rating system feel that extreme gory violence is less harmful to people than sex. As someone who has dated in Vancouver for five years now, I'm almost tempted to agree.

The identity of the MPAA members is a secret more carefully protected than how they get the Caramilk into the Caramilk bar (which by the way, I looked up, and it's clever machinery and judicious layering.) Despite all this cloak and dagger crap, it's probably a safe guess that an association that would give a movie featuring loads of casual and gory violence and pretty extreme homophobia a PG-13, one free of violence but featuring a naked woman an R, and one featuring a plain old penis the "kiss of death" NC17 rating might possibly have a disproportionate prevalence of heterosexual conservative white males. But that's only my guess; the MPAA has never, to my knowledge, been required to reveal the demographics of their members, how they are chosen, or even the system they use to rate the movies themselves. Doesn't that seem a little strange to you? My beloved second family throws an annual rib competition that has a more formal and accountable process than that, and last I checked, BBQ ribs have only a very minor impact on the formation of cultural values, at least outside of Texas. So why all the secrecy?

The MPAA claims that their group is demographically balanced, but given that they've taken pains to never be accountable to prove that, it's a questionable claim at best. Secondly, the fact that the members selected are exclusively parents inherently refutes their claim that the association is demographically balanced, at least in terms of sexual preference, given that there are still states in the US that ban gay adoption. If fewer gay people are permitted to adopt in the US, and thus be parents, then that automatically ensures a heterosexual bias, admittedly slight, on the association.

And doesn't it seem odd that the fact that the members have to be parents? This would lead us to conclude they don't think that people without children would have a balanced perspective on what is and isn't damaging. This is a distinction that eliminates the rather valuable opinions of counsellors, sociologists, schoolteachers, doctors and politicians, should they not have children themselves. There are some pretty bad parents out there and some pretty conscientious single people who would like to have some say in the world they bring children into, should they choose to. I think it would be a tough argument to state that bearing children makes one more open-minded, educated, or morally apt. It didn't do much for poor Britney, did it?

Even more ridiculous is that the parents in question aren't even required to be parents of young children - the very ones that would impacted by the ratings - so a 60 year old with grown children would still be prefered over a childless child psychologist. I'm not trying to generalize, but someone whose last experience raising little children was when Eisenhower was president might be slightly out of touch with the challenges faced by today's parents and the progressions of modern social norms. Kids today have internet access, cell phones, and increasingly live in urban cities. Trust me, a boob is probably the last thing you need to worry about them being harmed by.

So we have an association made up of the most wealthy studios dictating who can see what and when and why, using a rating system and a member selection roster that is deliberately kept from the public. And the studios stand to profit by their decisions, of course, which makes the whole thing even more suspect since they aren't exactly impartial. There is no accountability save a repeal board - made up of the same members, through a process also not required to be visible. Excuse me if this sounds a little libertarian, but isn't that just de facto censorship supporting the moral beliefs (and prejudices) of a specific social and demographic class who stand to benefit financially from maintaining the status quo? And don't we all kind of agree that that's a bad thing?

Adolf, put your hand down, please.



For Roger Ebert, a tremendously gifted writer who once postulated that the MPAA board members have "cut loose from sanity and are thrashing about at random."

On Envy

Avarice, envy, pride,
Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all
On Fire. ~Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

I always thought of envy as a pretty powerful motivator as opposed to a venal sin, but then again, I also didn’t think gluttony was all that bad either.

So if Greed is the desire for material goods and worldly things, Envy is the desire for qualities seen in others that one lacks. Dante called this "the love of one's own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs." So it’s being a two-part asshole; first, you have to want what that person has, and secondly, you have to want them not to have it any more. In Purgatory, Dante noted that the punishment for envy was to have your eyes sewn shut with wire to remind you that you gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. (I actually thought that was an anti-aging procedure, so there you go.)

If this is actually a venal sin, then we’re all screwed. Who doesn’t like to see someone brought low? “Not me!” we claim, defensively. “I’m a positive person. I get immense gratification from seeing others succeed!”

I call bullshit. If that were the case, why do you think photos of celebrities with no makeup are so highly prized? Because deep down inside, in a dark and twisty place (the same place that takes the better umbrella from the umbrella stand and pretends not to see the person rushing for the elevator when you’ve already pushed the button), we love to see someone else brought low. It’s not a noble part of our makeup, but it’s there.

The real indicator that humans really are motivated by envy is to remember that we seldom, if ever, hate another person based on qualities we despise. Which is ironic. No, we hate others based on their attainment of those qualities that we admire. Think about it. Do you ever lose sleep about people who exemplify laziness? Or insecurity? Or negativity?

Nah, we hate people that have the things we really want. Success. Generosity. Patience. Perky boobs.

Jung would have a field day with this one.

On Gluttony

How did gluttony get to be a deadly sin? I figured I'd start with the "lightest" sin and work my way up, but come on. I'm not convinced this even is a sin. It would be understandable for it to be a sin if what you were eating was, say, babies, or if you were a glutton because you were taking food away from hungry people, but how is it a sin all on its own? Wanting more of something is pretty natural.

In fact, it's driven by a survival mechanism. If a wolf brings down a caribou, you never see it nibble a leg and then go all coy and say to the wolf head-deep in the belly next door, "oh no, you bad thing, I just couldn't eat one more bite!" No, they eat until they fall over. And they're the ones that survive the winter.

When people are gluttonous about good things, like exercise or charity or education, that's a good thing, although kind of annoying for the rest of us. So I suppose in order to indict gluttony, you have to indict it only as it relates to naughty things, like recreational drugs or Big Macs. But even then, how sinful is gluttony? Yes, it's not a good idea to turn one's body into Vegas, but is it a sinful one? For the most part, gluttony only punishes the person doing the gluttony, so it's a tool to punish sinners. (Just like religion.) I guess being gluttonous could make one grossly overweight, and thus makes one look bad in stretchy clothing, and I think that we can all agree that looking bad in stretchy clothing is definitely a sin. But the mindset behind gluttony? That's beyond reproach. We love people who really throw themselves passionately into things. So what if you're trying to smoke cupcakes through a crack pipe instead of adopting underprivileged orphans from exotic countries by the dozen? The central dedication is the same.

But, you say, people don't just hurt themselves. Addicts hurt their families and loved ones. People who eat, drink or hotknife their feelings tend to pass those traits on to their children. So, for the purposes of making this a very neat seven-part post, and in the spirit of not trying to refute the word of god, here are some gross facts about gluttony that make me kind of embarassed to be human.

In a medical study, people who had eaten a full meal within an hour were offered either a free medium or giant-size popcorn. Gues which one they invariably picked? And all the participants dug in and ate the popcorn even despite none being hungry, but that's not even the gross part. The people with the giant-sized ones were given stale, two-week old popcorn and they ate it anyway. Apparently, we'll eat something if it's free, even when we're not hungry and even when that thing is garbage.

In another study, one group was offered chocolate cake and another group 'gateau du chocolate.' The group with the gateau du chocolate ate way more than the chocoate cake group, even gateau du chocolate just means chocolate cake in French. (I guess that doesn't really make us gluttonous so much as snobby, and stupid.)

Scientists have found that if you eat with one other person, you'll eat far less than if you are eating with seven people. In fact, people will consume 96% more food in big groups. I have no idea why, except maybe that humans are pretty competitive; maybe we think it's kind of cool to be able to eat a steak covered in...another steak.

All of these facts, in case you were doubting me (and you are right to - I make up facts all the time) are from O Magazine. And I suspect Ms. Winfrey might know a thing or two about eating habits. So I maintain: gluttony is good in theology but not in applied science.

And eating babies is still definitely not OK.